


Neither Timid Nor Tame

by Meduseld



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angry Kissing, Hamilturn, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Set in early season 2, mentioned teen romance, some bdsm elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 05:06:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11246913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Caleb Brewster should beware the green-eyed monster. The men around Ben Tallmadge make that difficult.





	Neither Timid Nor Tame

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://turn-kink.livejournal.com/799.html?thread=206623#t206623), set early in season 2.

Bradford’s staring at Ben’s back.

Caleb follows his line of sight: through the dancing flames of the camp’s bonfire, he can pick out Ben’s familiar shape, turned in profile, talking to someone Caleb can’t quite make out.

Only; Caleb’s standing.

 

Bradford’s sitting, gingerly, the burns Ben indirectly inflicted still tender he’d imagine, so he’s really staring directly at Ben’s back _side_.

A rush of hot black fury pumps through him so quickly it takes all he has to clench his fist so hard he thinks he hears something pop just so that he won’t shove Bradford’s leering face directly into the fire and give him matching sets of burns.

He knows that look. That hunger.

He’s seen it on a few sailors, shadowy men in bleak ports and he’s always done his damndest never to serve with them. There’s not much room on a ship, not for months at a time with nothing but deadly water around you.

There’s no place to hide from the darkest corners of men’s souls.

Or the ones in your own.

 

The thoughts push him forward, stalking forth with men falling away from his path like he’s a rampaging horse. He feels like one, all nameless, aimless fury. 

How dare Bradford. How dare anybody?

And underneath the pumping beat of guilt. How dare Caleb?

He’s not like those other men, he’s _not_.

Whatever passed between himself and Ben is long past, a foolish, boyish thing. Nothing to dwell on, easily forgotten.

The lines between then and now are clear. They’re boys no longer.

 

And if Caleb can’t always forget, if Caleb treasures those memories and locks them near his heart, if the company he pays for in ports far from where anyone knows him is of the less curvaceous variety, well. That’s no one’s business but his own.

It still doesn’t make him like those men, it _doesn’t_. This, this consuming anger this absolute fury is on Ben’s behalf, that’s been building a little everyday but starling in its sudden intensity, it’s because it’s his duty to protect his friend. That’s all.

 

So he stalks closer, willing his heart to settle, until he can see that Ben’s smiling.

His fists curl up again.

 

It’s Hamilton that he’s smiling at, the little Caribbean bastard.

Caleb likes him most days, quick with a joke and a fair hand at cards, but right now Caleb wants to pummel him with his still clenched fists. The little shite has a hand on Ben’s arm, and Ben hasn’t pulled away.

His mind runs through every grin Hamilton’s shot at Ben, every secret smile he’s seen pass between Hamilton and Laurens, every time he’s turned away because it’s not his business what might quietly happen on the cramped cots in the small room all the aides share. Not that Ben has ever had cause to spend the night there, has his own lodgings in deference to the nature of his work.

But. He’s a flirty little arse, that Hamilton, and it’s all too easy to hear the island thrum in his low voice, the things implicit in his invitation.

Not that Caleb’s close enough to hear what’s actually being said.

 

And yet it’s still easy for his treacherous mind to supply images, the two of them, no, the three of them, because Laurens is never more than a stone’s throw from Hamilton is he?

Soft spoken, that one, and as pretty as Ben is.

Even that mad prick General Arnold’s remarked on how much they resemble each other.  

Hell, Lafayette’s been known to pretend he can’t tell them apart.

It had seemed funny then, elbowing Ben’s ribs and asking, in a mocked up French accent, if he was sure his mother’d never made a trip down to South Carolina. The memory turns uncomfortable in his gut now, a mix of the gentle blush on Laurens’ face and the smirk on Hamilton’s. Lafayette’s grin.

And in the middle of it all, Ben smiling at Caleb the way he always has.

 

It calms him enough to get his voice back. “Ah, a word there? Major?”

Ben looks up, his eyes narrowing in friendly suspicion. Caleb only calls him Major when he wants something. And right now he desperately _wants_. Though what he can’t rightly name. 

 

“Alright, then” Ben nods. “’Night, Major, I’ll see to it tomorrow” Hamilton says, moving away and there’s a new burst of rage in Caleb’s chest at that, at how easily Hamilton completely ignores him, while pitching his voice so intimately at his superior. 

He knows it’s hard to resist longing for that intimacy, has night after lonely night to prove it. Not that it had accomplished anything.

“Thank you, Ham, goodnight yourself” Ben says then starts at whatever’s showing on Caleb’s face.

“ _Ham_?” 

“Everyone calls him that.” Ben replies easily enough, but there’s a furrow between his brows. 

“This is to be a private conversation, then?” and Caleb nods firmly, curling a hand around Ben’s elbow, feeling settled now even though he has nothing actually say.

“Wait for me at Sackett’s shed. I’ve got to stop off at the General’s a moment” and just like that the hurricane swells back inside him.

~

Ben’s so _concerned_ for the General.

So preoccupied with his wellbeing that it was him he’d thought of when his jaw was swelling into a deep red-purple and _Caleb_ was standing right in front of him with an eye closing up from someone’s elbow.

The general and his young men, a voice that sounds like Bradford’s whispers through Caleb’s mind as he paces in Sackett’s shed, too full of energy to sit and too mindful of the destructive potential of Sackett’s little knick-knacks to risk it anyway.

Pretty, Bradford had called Ben, and Caleb _knew_ that. All too well.

So is Laurens. Hamilton too, Caleb can admit. Even Lafayette, if you can count him among them.

It had been a laugh then too, Lafayette and his kisses, startling the fine upstanding men of the Continental Army, turning soldiers to blushing boys. But now.

Now it settles like a stone over his heart. Caleb _hates_ it.

He hates how his treacherous mind turns over images he’s never seen, mixing them with the memories he has of Ben when he was skinnier, paler, and his smiles came easier.

Reminds him of the mumbles he’d kissed out of Ben’s mouth like he was stealing, stopping him from making promises he couldn’t keep, saying words he couldn’t mean.

He must be even more beautiful now, underneath the blue and gold, and why shouldn’t he let them see? They’re men of breeding and standing, poised to inherit the world.

The most Caleb would have ever been able to claim was his uncle’s apple orchard and even that’s gone now. Why would Ben ever deign to touch him again?

 

It’s a familiar thought, that, it echoed through his mind every night those few cold winter months they’d been – that they’d _indulged_ before Ben had gone to college in the spring and Caleb had joined a whaler to get away from the memories, the stifling emptiness of a town that never changed at all except that it had changed completely because Ben was gone and all his oldest friends were different people.

Even now, brought together by a war, it’s never been clearer that the children they were are gone and with them the world they knew.

Caleb has no home to return to.

The thought is so sobering that for a moment he stops pacing. Maybe he’s just lonely after all. Lonely and angry and throwing a tantrum.

And then the door bursts open.

 

Cloak billowing in the night wind, braid artfully undone, framed for a moment in the doorway, Ben looks more like a schoolgirl’s fantasy of a continental officer than the bloodied warrior Caleb’s seen or the shy clerk he pretends to be.

It’s all he can do not to rush over and bury his hands into whatever part of him he can reach.

Ben ruins it by opening his mouth. 

“I apologize for the delay, Lafayette detained -”

 

The next thing he knows, Caleb has Ben’s cloak bunched in his fists, crowding him against the wooden slats of the door. 

“Lafayette? Not Laffy? Like little Hammie?” 

“What? What on earth’s gotten into you, you don’t think-” 

“Think what? That you’re a popular man amongst their company?” “Stop. Now. Whatever-“

“I see the way they look at you, and you! They all- _Bradford_ even-” Caleb stumbles, the wailing gale in his heart stealing with mind and strangling his voice. He quiets went Ben’s hands gently grasp his wrists.

He looks up into those blue eyes and gets half a moment of peace before Ben’s forehead slams down on his and his vision goes white.

The sweet preacher’s boy always did like to fight dirty.

 

They go down together, rolling and wrestling in a way they haven’t in ages, and there’s a visceral satisfaction in dirtying him up, in watching his hair tumble the rest of the way out of his braid before being completely and utterly pinned.

He’s never been able to bring himself to really hurt Ben. Not that he can say the same.

One of his hands grabs Caleb’s wrists, the other reaches back and tangles in his hair, tightens, stopping the names Caleb’s been calling him without thinking. 

“You complete and utter _arse_ ” he hisses, his face closing in.

Caleb’s body reacts before his mind and he surges up towards him.

He only closes half the distance before the grip on his hair stops him and Ben rears back anyway. His face is apocalyptically angry. 

“Stupid and stubborn as a mule. You could’ve _asked_ ” he spits and then they’re kissing.

 

It’s harsh, biting and fierce and Caleb can taste blood. He’s almost certain it’s his lip that’s split.

The hand in his hair hasn’t loosened its grip, but the other is pulling him closer and his whole body is singing, alive with the joy of Ben in his arms, of his hands on his skin.

Ben is still muttering every time their lips part; insults, endearments and disbelief “And I thought this was important-” “Well it was” 

“ _Quiet_ you. And what must Ham think?” 

“Couldn’t care. Greedy prat already has Laurens anyway”.

Ben knocks a sharp elbow into his ribs at that, kissing him deeply enough to come away with blood stained lips before drawing back.

Caleb reaches for him, but there’s a certain look in his eye that tells him it won’t be that easy. 

 

“Mm, no. That would be rewarding insubordination, I think.” “Ben. C’mon. I’m sorry, _really_ ”.

Ben smiles, angelic, and Caleb knows he’s about to pay for this mess. He deserves to.

“Sorry for what exactly? Slandering my character?”

Caleb winces.

“Or that of my fellow officers? In fact, a certain fellow officer, a marquis actually, offered to provide some brandy to myself and some of the aides in his tent tonight. I, thinking I had valuable intelligence to receive, declined. It seems I was hasty”.

There are terrible words at the tip of Caleb’s tongue. Words that would land him right back where he started.

He visibly swallows them and Ben’s eyes soften. 

 

“If you really are sorry, you can wait here. It won’t be long, it wouldn’t do to be overtired when I meet with His Excellency tomorrow”. It’s a challenge. Penance.

Or an escape.

The only problem is Caleb can’t figure out whether it’s meant for him or for Ben.

He could leave, salvage his dignity. Bow out gracefully.

Instead he meets Ben’s eyes and nods.

And waits.

~

He’s true to his word.

Always has been.

It’s less than an hour before he returns, cheeks flushed more from cold than from alcohol. His eyes light up when they meet Caleb’s. 

“You’re still here” he whispers, almost reverent. Caleb nods.

~

It’s softer, now, when they kiss.

It’s like they’re going back to the beginning, retracing familiar roads, learning each other again, mapping out skin and scars and bruises.

Marking the differences and reveling in them, in the deeper gasps and harsher moans, the new weight of muscle and the practiced smoothness of motion. Caleb’s traveled the world to bring this back to Ben, to travel the length of his skin, over and over again. To watch him go taught in the candlelight, tasting the cold night air from his lips.

Ben licks at the lines and curls of ink high on Caleb’s arm and Caleb sucks at the round mark the Queen’s Rangers put on Ben’s shoulder.

Ben’s teeth follow his tongue, closing on his neck and Caleb feels like he’s finally come home. 

~

The floor of the shed is cold, even when pressed so closely together on top of a thick major’s cloak.

But with the lazy way Ben’s running his thumb over the edge of the ink on Caleb’s side, cheeks pink with the scratch of Caleb’s beard, he can’t bring himself to move.

He’ll ache tomorrow, from the hard earth and the bruises Ben sucked and bit and pressed into his skin.

It’ll be the good ache of satisfying work, of carrying the reminders of tonight.

Every brush of his clothes against his scrapes, every sweet sting of a bruise will tell him that Ben picked _him_.

The others can look all they want, they’ve never had this pleasure, won’t never have it, will never be marked by his hands. 

“I trust this settles the matter” Ben murmurs against his chest. Caleb grins.  

“Dunno, Benny-boy. Might need more conferring over”.

Ben pokes at a red bite mark on his hip with a grin. 

“I might just be persuaded. Of course there is just one small matter that I just can’t comprehend.”

Caleb makes some vague noise.

There are a lot of things that could be covered there. Things he’s not particularly inclined to talk about now that he’s feeling more grounded, less alone with his thoughts.

But there’s a laugh in Ben’s voice:

“Did you honestly think I might have affections for _Bradford_?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Suggested listening for this fic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3LFML_pxlY/). Hamilton’s irl rank was probably already Lt. Colonel as per the deleted scene, so that ranks him above Ben but let’s agree to pretend Ben would outrank him at the time, ok? [btw Hamilton was really flirty with Ben in that scene](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_o1SI82DBseR3FrcWJHdlNPOFU/view). [Washington’s aides really slept two a bed in a small room and called Hamilton ‘Ham’ or ‘Hammie’](https://books.google.fr/books?id=4z5eL5SGjEoC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=The+four+to+six+young+aides+usually+slept+in+one+room,+often+two+to+a+bed,+then+worked+long+days+in+a+single+room+with+chairs+crowded+around+small+wooden+tables&source=bl&ots=usdIwwlkSb&sig=zqUdc8qPgBQQn82TZhnfZagko6Q&hl=es&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM3Z_hkb7JAhUBhhoKHZ7DCD8Q6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=The%20four%20to%20six%20young%20aides%20usually%20slept%20in%20one%20room%2C%20often%20two%20to%20a%20bed%2C%20then%20worked%20long%20days%20in%20a%20single%20room%20with%20chairs%20crowded%20around%20small%20wooden%20tables&f=false). [Caleb’s tattoos are plausible, if unsanitary (that’s an interesting excerpt; the actual article is behind a paywall)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cf4v7/where_did_sailors_in_the_1700s1800s_get_tattooed/). [Seth Numrich also seems to have a strong resemblance to irl John Laurens](http://john-laurens.tumblr.com/post/121281212013/sometimes-im-like-i-think-seth-numrich-could).


End file.
